


Guitar Heroes

by Tengosa



Category: Persona 5
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-20 23:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16148195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tengosa/pseuds/Tengosa
Summary: Ren and Makoto, hearing that there's going to be a concert nearby where three of their favorite bands are all playing together, go out for a night filled with wonderful music and enjoy themselves.





	Guitar Heroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tesla_Rolex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesla_Rolex/gifts).



> So, this is my first crack at fanfic. I know it's probably not very good but I promised Tesla_Rolex, author of the absolutely phenomenal fic Alone and Forsaken (which you should totally check out), that I'd try my hand at it. He even gave me the prompt and came up with the title for it when I drew a blank. And so, here it is! A little fluff fic about Ren and Makoto going to a concert together.

            “Ren, hurry up, we’re gonna be late!”

            Ren Amamiya put the last of the leftover curry ingredients in the fridge of LeBlanc Café before shutting the door.

            “Relax,” Ren said, walking around the counter, stopping by his cat Morgana who was sitting on one of the barstools. “The show isn’t scheduled to start for another hour, which means it won’t start for at least an hour and a half.”

            Makoto Niijima, Ren’s girlfriend of roughly three years, stood near the front door, jacket already on.

            “This isn’t the first concert we’ve been to together, Ren,” Makoto said, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Nor is it the first one we’ve been to one at the Tokyo Dome. You know how crowded the trains are going to be for a show this big. If we want to get there on time, we need to leave in the next ten minutes, no later.”

            “Ever the punctual one,” Ren said with a smile. “I’ll go grab my jacket and then we can be off.

            Makoto smiled. “Thank you.”

            As Ren turned and headed up the stairs to the attic he called his room, Makoto turned to Morgana.

            “Morgana, keep an eye on the place while we’re out, won’t you?”

            The cat looked up from licking his paw, blue eyes staring up at the red-eyed young woman.

            “Of course,” the cat said in his boyish voice. “I haven’t let anything happen to this place when you’ve gone out in the year and or so you guys have been living here together, have I?”

            “That’s true enough. But, are you sure that doesn’t have something to do with the fact that Futaba comes over and watches it with you most of the time?”

            “Hey! I can take care of this place all on my own, you know!”

            Ren came down the stairs at that moment, wearing his jacket with the hood down.

            “Don’t antagonize the cat, hon. That’s my thing.”

            Makoto giggled.

            “And you,” Morgana said, turning on the barstool to face Ren. “You better make sure the two of you get back here on time, understand? Just because I’m not going with you doesn’t mean you get to stay out all night.”

            “It’s a concert, Mona,” Ren said, walking over and standing next to Makoto. “It’s not scheduled to start until half-past nine and, even if it does start on time, it’s probably gonna be at least a three-hour to three-and-a-half-hour show including the opening act.”

            “Fine,” Morgana said, hopping off the barstool and making his way over to the staircase. Pausing and looking back before he started up it, he spoke again. “Um, could you see if Futaba or Haru might be available to come over? It gets kinda lonely here when I’m all by myself.”

            Ren and Makoto both smiled.

            “I’ll give Haru a text,” Makoto said. “See if she can drop by for a couple hours.”

            “Thanks,” Morgana said. “Now get going! You paid ¥17,000 for these tickets! You better not waste that money; we only have so much left over from what we got in Mementos.”

            “We’re going,” Ren said as he and Makoto turned around, heading out the front door.

            “Wait!” Morgana called out.

            Ren stuck his head back in the door just before it closed.

            “Yeah?”

            “Have fun.”

            Ren smiled. “We will. Thanks.”

            Ren pulled his head back out the door and he and Makoto began making their way to the train station.

            Inside LeBlanc, Morgana sighed as he climbed the stairs up to the attic.

            “I wish they would let me go with them for once. When I’m a human again, I’m gonna do all the things I can’t do now. Concerts, video games, going places on my own, all that stuff.” The cat curled up on the bed, settling in as he waited for Haru to arrive.

 

 

 

            Ren and Makoto had been riding the train for about five minutes and the train had just arrived at the Bunkyō station nearest to Tokyo Dome, the concert venue of the evening.

            As the train doors opened, Ren and Makoto filed out with the rest of the crowd that had piled into the cramped space. The couple made their way out of the underground station. They were roughly one block from Tokyo Dome and nearly everyone in sight was moving towards the stadium. Visible in the distance were the bright red letters of the marquee advertising the show.

 

**Tonight Only**

**Dead Sara and The Struts**

**With**

**Two Door Cinema Club**

            Ren and Makoto looked at each other and smiled. Three of their favorite bands, all playing the same venue together, one opening for a dual show with the other two. They began walking toward the front door of the stadium, excited to see what songs each band would play.

            As they got to the front door, the couple both produced their phones, pulling up the QR codes that they had gotten when they purchased their tickets online. The woman checking tickets for admittance scanned both of their phones and waved them in.

            Ren and Makoto stopped at a concession stand to buy drinks before making their way to their seats. They were in a pretty good spot, roughly twenty rows up on the front side of the stage. It was an open stage, raised a good ten feet off the ground, so there wasn’t anything obstructing the view no matter where you were sitting in the stadium but there was very clearly a front and back of the stage. Ren and Makoto’s seats were roughly halfway in the middle of the row they were in and the seats on either side of theirs were already filled up. The two squeezed past a bunch of people, apologizing and excusing themselves the entire time. When they finally reached their seats, they sat down, placing their drinks in the holders in the armrests.

            The two looked at each other and grinned. There were already sound technicians on stage doing a sound check for the opening band. It had been a very long time since either of them had been as excited for something as they both were right now.

            Ten minutes later, at exactly half-past nine, Alex Trimble, Sam Halliday, and Kevin Baird walked onto the stage from the portion out of sight. It seemed as though everyone in the stadium was there to see the opening act just as much as they were to see the main show. The entire stadium was cheering right along with Ren and Makoto.

            None of the band members bothered saying anything. They knew it was unlikely that many of the people in the audience would be able to understand them. Instead, they did what they knew how to do best: they played.

            After roughly 15 minutes of playing, the opening notes to Ren and Makoto’s favorite song of theirs, [Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKyK1Mme9Sc), played. The couple looked at each other and grinned, getting ready for what was going to be one of their favorite parts of the night. After another fifteen minutes of playing or so, the band took a bow and left the stage. Amid the cheering, Ren and Makoto turned to each other yet again, grinning like idiots.

            During the time in-between the opening act ending and the main show starting, Ren ran to the restroom. While he was in line, he overheard a conversation.

            “Hey, Takashi,” came the voice of a woman behind Ren. “You ever wonder what kind of music big stars like this like?”

            “Huh,” responded the voice of a man. “Yeah, I guess, sometimes. That’s a bit of an odd question, Setsuko.”

            “Yeah, I suppose. I was just thinking about this interview I read with the idol Rise Kujikawa where she said her favorite genre of music is the kind that she doesn’t have to think about. Y’know, like, one where there are no words, or she doesn’t understand the words. That got me wondering what kind of music people like Luke or Emily enjoy.”

            Ren smiled at the conversation. It was one he’d had with Makoto before. At that point, Ren got to the front of the line and went into the restroom. Ten minutes later he was back at his seat.

            “Hey,” Makoto said, smiling at Ren as he sat down.

            “Hi,” Ren said, smiling back.

            “How were the restrooms?”

            “Relieving. Shouldn’t have gotten the large. You need to go?”

            “Nope,” Makoto replied. “I only got a medium, remember?”

            “Ah, right.”

            Just then, the lights in the stadium went back down.

            “Ooh, here we go,” Makoto said. “I wonder who’s gonna play first.”

            “Well, The Struts are bigger but Dead Sara has a much bigger discography right now.”

            At that point, Gethin Davies, Jed Elliot, and Adam Slack walked up onto stage to thunderous cheers.

            “Where’s Luke?” Makoto yelled over the noise, leaning over to Ren.

            “I hear he likes to make an entrance!”

            The guitarist, Adam, struck a chord, an action met with even louder cheering. He repeated this a few times, getting the crowd louder every time. When it seemed the crowd could get no louder, part of the floor opened up and the frontman, Luke Spiller, was raised up onto the stage.

            He was dressed in an ostentatious outfit truly befitting a rockstar; he wore a solid black shirt with a red pattern on it reminiscent of a blood spatter, accompanied by tight black leather pants and several bracelets on each wrist.

            Spiller walked up to the microphone and spoke into it, a circular display screen suspended from the roof of the stadium translating what he said into Japanese in real time.

            “Alllll right everybody, are we having a good time so far?!”

            The crowd screamed out in response.

            “Now _that’s_ what I like to hear! Now, before we get started, we’d just like to say how much it means that you all spent your hard-earned money to come out and see us play our music. It truly does mean the world to us, especially since we only have one album and a few singles out so far. Now, we aren’t going to do an encore, that way we get to spend as much time with you all as possible before we’ve got to run off, hope that’s okay with you. But enough of that, we’ve only got about an hour of music to play for you but after that the absolutely phenomenal Dead Sara are going to come out and perform for you all!”

            The crowd cheered yet again.

            “Now then, my mates and I are gonna put on a bit of a show for you all tonight! How does that sound to you all?!”

            More screams rang out.

            “Well then, boys, let’s get to it!”

            With that, the band launched into one of their biggest songs, [Could Have Been Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARhk9K_mviE).

            After playing for roughly 55 minutes, the band wound down and stopped playing for a moment. Spiller spoke again.

            “I just wanna say again, on behalf of both myself and the boys, just how grateful we really are that you all decided to come out and see us play. Y’know, last year we released our debut album over in England and absolutely nothing happened. But then we bought four plane tickets to America, rereleased it, and we really took off. Now, we are playing the best shows of our lives, in front of the greatest audiences we could ask for! So, let me ask you this! When we come back through town, will you lot come back out and see us again?!”

            The question was met with as loud a cheer as had been given all night.

            “Well alright then! We’ll hold ya to that! Now then, we’ve got one more song for you all before the amazing Dead Sara come out and put on a hell of a show for you! This last one is called [Kiss This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61Xj0pHawE)!”

            After the song ended, the band took a series of bows and left the stage, with Luke blowing one last kiss out to the audience before taking his leave for good.

            Even after five minutes, the crowd was still cheering and making a massive amount of noise. Soon, however, they quieted down as the house lights were raised.

            “Another break,” Makoto asked Ren, deferring to him since he had been to far more concerts than her.

            “Yeah, sometimes they do that with dual performance shows like this. Seems like about half the time they take a break between the main acts and half the time they just have a seamless transition between the two.”

            “Oh, I see. Well, in that case, I’m going to go to the restroom. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I hope the show doesn’t start back up before I return.”

            “Nah,” Ren said as Makoto got up. “You’ve got plenty of time. Probably won’t be another twenty minutes or so before they start again.”

            “Oh, good. Well, even so, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

            As Makoto made her way to the restroom, she fell into stride behind a couple of women.

            “There are a lot of people here younger than us, Misaki. Don’t you feel out of place?”

            “Hmmmm? Oh, no, not at all. Why, do you, Riku?”

            “I mean, a bit. Like, there’s this brunette girl in the row below us with a boy with really frizzy black hair, probably a couple. They can’t be more than 20 years old or so.”

            Makoto was almost certain the women were talking about her and Ren but at that point she reached the restroom and the women continued out towards a concession stand. Makoto decided to put the conversation out of her head. It had been a long time since she’d had any need to listen in on other people and what they were saying. A fact for which she was grateful.

            Makoto used the restroom, washed her hands, and made her way back to her seat.

            Ren looked up from his phone as Makoto returned to her seat and sat back down.

            “Hey, you’re just on time,” he said with a smile. "Sound techs just left the stage, so they should be out soon.”

            Just as Ren finished his sentence, the house lights dimmed once more, something the tens of thousands of people filling the stadium responded to with thunderous cheers.

            Three spotlights came on, shining down on the stage. In the darkness, it was just possible to make out two figures making their way onto the stage, one taking up place at the drum set as the other picked up a guitar and took a spot on stage left.

            The crowd filling the stadium roared out, knowing that soon the lead singer would make her way onto the stage.

            The guitarist, Siouxsie Medley, struck a chord on her guitar. The crowd roared louder. The drummer, Sean Friday, played a few beats. The crowd screamed out. Then, a third figure became visible and made their way onto the stage, taking a place in the third spotlight, behind the main microphone.

            “Tokyo,” the woman, Emily Armstrong, yelled out into the mic. “How the fuck are you guys doin’ tonight?”

            The question was met with the loudest cheers of the night.

            “Fuckin’ awesome! Are you guys ready for some music?!”

            More cheers.

            “Well let’s get started then!”

            The band launched into one of their biggest songs, [Radio One Two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZSAGXm2Y44).

            The band played for nearly two and a half hours, putting on amazing song after amazing song. Makoto and Ren both got to hear their favorite song from the band, [Baby Rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbPFlZGfTRY) and [Times to Remember](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEZy_5wvAhk), respectively. The show closed out with the absolute biggest hit the band had produced to date, Weatherman.

            “Now then,” Armstrong said. “We’ve gotta get going but, uh, I just wanted to take a minute to say how honored we are that you would all come out just to see us play. We know that our friends The Struts are a bit more popular than us right now, seeing as how they’ve opened for bands like The Rolling Stones and Foo Fighters, but the fact that even with them doing a show with us we could sell out a venue of this size is, uh, it’s pretty damn cool, we think. So, we just wanted to say thank you real quick.”

            With that, the band took a bow and left the stage.

            Makoto and Ren looked at each other, both temporarily very nearly deaf from the sheer volume of the show and their proximity to the stage, and grinned, knowing full well they wouldn’t be able to hear each other for at least fifteen minutes and that their hearing wouldn’t be fully recovered for at least thirty. Nonetheless, they were both as happy as they had been in a very long time.

            Some ten minutes later, after navigating the massive crowd and fighting their way back down to the train and beginning the return trip to Yongen-Jaya, Ren and Makoto were talking with each other, gushing over how much they had enjoyed themselves and the show.

            “Okay, so,” Ren said. “I know we both have favorite songs from all three groups but Sun is the only favorite we share. What I wanna know is, after seeing all three of them live, do you have any new favorite songs?”

            “Hmmm,” Makoto hummed, bringing her hand to her chin. “Actually,” she said, lowering her hand. “I do. A new favorite by Two Door Cinema Club is [What You Know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXwYJyrKK5A), by The Struts it’s [Body Talks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc3XIbUuTMc), and by Dead Sara it’s [One Day We'll Make It Big](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5FZZnwKoQ). And you, any new favorites?”

            “You know me, I’m always picking new favorite songs. For Two Door Cinema Club it’s [Undercover Martyn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLK4oaXUuLg), for The Struts it's [Primadonna Like Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi_QEATjgYM), and for Dead Sara it’s [Mr. Mr.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9SO06F-p0g)”

            At around that time, the train rolled to a stop.

            “Yongen-Jaya,” the voice chimed over the intercom. “This is Yongen-Jaya. Please, watch your step as you exit the train.”

            Ren and Makoto rose from their seats on the now much less crowded train and made their way out of the station, heading down the back alley to LeBlanc.

            As they opened the door and the bell above it chimed, a young woman in a pink sweater with fluffy hair looked up from a book and a cup of coffee.

            “Oh, hello,” she said in a high pitched, sweet voice.

            “Hi, Haru,” Ren said with a smile as he and Makoto moved further into the café.

            “Did you and Morgana have a nice evening?” Makoto asked.

            “Mm-hmm! Mona-chan and I watched a nice movie and then spent a good bit just talking with each other. He’s upstairs asleep now. I figured I would wait for you both to get home.”

            “Thanks for hanging out with him while we were out tonight,” Ren said. “I know he appreciates it and we do too.”

            “Oh, of course! I love spending time here while you guys are out. I get to have wonderful conversations with Mona-chan and sometimes even Futaba-chan. Not to mention I get to enjoy the fantastic coffee that you brew, Ren-kun.”

            “Well, I’m glad you had a nice evening,” Makoto said.

            “Thank you,” Haru said, standing. “I’m sure that the two of you are very tired. I’ll let you get to bed.” After giving both Ren and Makoto a quick hug, Haru left the café.

            Ren and Makoto made their way up the stairs into the attic room they shared, staying quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping Morgana on the sofa next to the television.

            The couple undressed and changed into more comfortable clothes better suited to sleeping and climbed into bed.

            “Ahhh,” Ren sighed, settling in next to Makoto. “What a show.”

            “So, mister concert connoisseur, how does that stack up to the fifty or so others that you’ve seen?”

            “Easily top five, in terms of performance. Favorite in terms of how much fun I had. How about you?”

            “Best I’ve seen and most fun.”

            “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”

            Makoto leaned over and nuzzled her face into the crook of Ren’s neck.

            “Almost half past one. We should get to sleep.”

            Ren turned his head and kissed Makoto on the forehead before reaching an arm up and wrapping it around her, pulling her close as he shifted his head back to lie flat against the pillow.

            “I love you, Makoto,” Ren said sleepily.

            “I love you too, Ren. Sleep well.”

            “Mmm, you too.”

            Shortly after that, the two drifted off to sleep. It was a night they would never forget and would hold forever as some of the most fun they’d ever had together. Even years later, long after they’d gotten married and had children and even grandchildren, they would frequently reminisce about the night, simply because they had enjoyed themselves that much.


End file.
